Thursday, July 17, 2008

Cha Ching

Greetings from Sligo! The sun is shining this afternoon for nearly the first time all week, but the even the drizzle hasn't stopped us from having a great time with our fellow New Winos . . .

Heard a really interesting and inspiring presentation yesterday from an amazing organisation called Christians Against Poverty. CAP has 72 debt counseling centres in local churches across the UK. They have provided high quality, in-depth debt counseling to over 17,000 people since starting eleven years ago. CAP stands between the debtor and the person in debt and develops re-payment plans to help most clients become debt free within five years! I was glad to hear that the UK has quite robust laws to protect an adequate level of living costs from creditors (the only problem being that most people who are being harassed by lenders don't know about them!)

It's intriguing (but not really surprising) to think that the service has been so well-used over the past decade which has been one of the most prosperous in the UK. How much more relevant will this charity be in our current credit crunch?